13 January 2011 – Campaign to save ESOL classes

Jenny Roden and I both attended a meeting at UCU headquarters in Camden on 12 January. The meeting was led by Dan Taubman of UCU and Patricia Sullivan
Of NATECLA (National Association of Teachers of English and Community Languages), along with around 100 supporters from London and several other cities in the UK.

Our country has had a long history of welcoming people from all over the world but in the past few years that welcome has begun to wear thin from our Labour and now Coalition governments. If the proposed severe restrictions on the most disadvantaged migrants, and those dependent on others, go forward, this will mean that those least able to pay for their own fees will be prevented from learning English. Inevitably this means that a college like SCOLA would lose a substantial proportion of its ESOL learners from next September. It also jeopardises jobs for Skills for Life teachers.

It was exciting to be with a group of long standing ESOL practitioners setting up a campaign group that will network all over the country, but the imminent cuts are very real and the implications for both those in employment as teachers, let alone those who will arrive in this country alienated from our culture from the outset, are grim.

Sarah Freeman